Counsel for the applicants argued that if the first drug did not work, the second causes a conscious paralysis while the third causes an ‘excruciating burning pain’.
In a 7 to 2 vote, the justices said the three-drug combination used by Kentucky, similar to that used by the federal government, does not carry a risk of substantial pain so great as to violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
‘Simply because an execution method may result in pain, either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death, does not establish the sort of objectively intolerable risk of harm that qualifies as cruel and unusual’, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.
This decision will result in the dissolution of the de facto moratorium on executions that had taken hold since the court announced in September that it would decide the case, Baze v Rees.
The decision however, was highly fractured and will most likely result in future litigation. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that execution methods must not create an ‘untoward readily avoidable risk of inflicting severe and unnecessary pain’ and added that she could not be sure that Kentucky had taken all necessary safeguards.
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